Blog # 147...November 2023
"Oh Canada, our home on native land," I love Jully Black's tiny one word switch in our national anthem that corrects the picture from coast to coast to coast. Since I flew east recently, my thoughts are moving first in that direction - to Suzanne Stewart in Nova Scotia, then to Manitoba with Wab Kinew and out to Naomi Klein in British Columbia...and finally to a great Arctic/Amazon collaboration in Toronto. November brings its own darkness, this year we're already drowning in serious difficulties at home and brutal horrors abroad, so we need flashes of brightness to keep us afloat.
When I was in Halifax I was pleased to have the ideal gift to take to friends who made me enormously welcome. Although it was a bit like taking coals to Newcastle, I gave them Suzanne Stewart's book The Tides of Time. A long time resident of Antigonish where she teaches at St Francis Xavier University, Suzanne began to think of our relationship with time and with the seasons, and has produced a contemplative book centred around the rural labours unique to Nova Scotia taking place each month. Starting in September (the beginning of the academic year) she meets and tells stories of tuna fishers, apple growers, beekeepers, sheep farmers, cranberry farmers, maple syrup producers, concluding in August with wild blueberry harvesting. It's a quiet, calm book, just the thing to neutralize the crowded, noisy and worrisome lives we lead...even in Nova Scotia.
And a few weeks ago, we rejoiced in the result of the election in Manitoba that gave us our first Indigenous provincial premier. Wab Kinew's first act in the legislature was to introduce a bill to formally recognize Metis leader Louis Riel as the province's first premier and to modernize the education curriculum to accurately reflect his life and accomplishments. Faced with corrosive criticism about his troubled past during the campaign, Wab was forthright in turning it into a wish that people whose situations were not so good right now could see in his life, hope for their own. Coming from a background somewhat different from most politicians (as well as being Indigenous, he's been a CBC journalist and broadcaster and a successful writer) gives Wab an edge on relating to Manitoba citizens. His memoir - The Reason You Walk, a story of reconciliation with his father who had been a residential school survivor, is both candid and moving. We'll be watching him with hope.
A few years ago, Naomi Klein moved to British Columbia to be close to her parents. By this time, she had begun to realize that she was frequently being confused with Naomi Wolf: Same first name - not just them but their husbands - both Jewish, similar hair colour and style, and, perhaps most confounding, similar views early in their careers. Naomi Wolf wrote The Beauty Myth attacking the beauty industry in 1990; Naomi Klein wrote No Logo in 1999 poking at the "brand bullies". Naomi Klein (our Naomi) continues to examine aspects of our world from the left while the other Naomi has swung to the far right, become an anti vaxxer, conspiracy theorist and frequent guest of Steve Bannon on Fox News. In her highly personal Doppelganger, our Naomi examines how easily doubles can confuse our thinking and upset our perception of reality...I hope it clears up who she is!
The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University is home to a clever Arctic/Amazon project, an outside mural that brings together artists from two Indigenous groups, one from Nunavik, the other from a remote area of Peru. Intending to unify the traditions and cultural legacies of these two regions and honour global indigeneity, the mural appears on the west wall of Kerr Hall, on Gould Street and Nelson Mandela Way, near Yonge and Dundas.
And since we're in the realm of Indigenous culture, this year's ImagiNATIVE, the annual celebration of media arts was bigger and more inclusive than ever. Since its founding by Cynthia Lickers-Sage in 1998, they've brought Indigenous film and video makers and other visual artists from around the world to present their creative excellence and innovation to each other and to us. Ten programs of shorts on different themes, animated programs for the "grandbabies", feature films, an art walk to gallery shows and a gala finale at the Art Gallery of Ontario are some of the attractions to whet our appetite for next year.
And as I write this, my heart aches for all the Indigenous people harmed by the immensely complex controversy over legitimacy and the damage to our progress towards reconciliation.
